


clinical measures

by bee1103



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hospital, Canonical Character Death, Doctors & Paramedics, F/M, Shootings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-05
Updated: 2015-03-05
Packaged: 2018-03-16 09:38:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3483383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bee1103/pseuds/bee1103
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She shouldn’t have. She’s not really a superstitious person by nature but even she knows better: the minute you say something is the minute everything goes to shit. </p><p>A man – one who’d been brought in with the other City Hall victims – leaps onto a chair and fires two shots into the ceiling tiles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	clinical measures

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [electrocardiography](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1920750) by [spiekiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiekiel/pseuds/spiekiel). 



> Please be forewarned that the entirety of my medical knowledge comes from hospital dramas and the Internet. If anything is grossly incorrect, forgive me as I have no idea what I'm talking about. 
> 
> Also, I know I'm supposed to be finishing TWBK - and I am nearly done with it - but this wouldn't leave me alone so I had to get it written. As usual, I have no beta so all the mistakes are mine.

Felicity is so tired she honestly thinks she might actually be asleep and living in a dream version of her life. She has no idea why she agreed to pick up Laurel’s nightshift – perhaps some bid for cordiality between the two women – but she’d like to just forget about that and take it all back.

She’s holding her white, generic, chipped coffee mug in front of her like a shield, begging that everyone recognizes it as a sign she needs a two-minute break. Apparently, God is punishing her for being a terrible Jew though because she’s nearly past the nurses’ station when –

“Smoaky!” Tommy Merlyn – quite possibly the world’s best nurse and most annoyingly charming human – comes running around the counter, smile firmly in place and looking for all the world like he hasn’t been working for the past twenty hours.

She tries to manage a hello for him, but all she’s got is a vague moaning sound coming from her throat as she waves her empty cup at him. He gets the point. Then he chuckles and holds up a to-go cup that smells deliciously like it’s from the place on the corner.

“Sweet lord almighty,” she says, making grabby hands at the cup. Tommy laughs again and hands it over without resistance. She takes a sip and makes an extremely inappropriate sound which only makes Tommy’s grin wider, “How did you know this is my favorite?”

“I have my sources,” he says. “And you’re welcome.”

Tommy is a wonderful person and while this gift isn’t without precedent, Felicity squints her eyes at him, suspicious, “All right, what do you want?”

He presses a hand to his chest, mock offended at her accusation, “Me? Wow – so the truth comes out: this is what you really think of me. Trading coffee for favors – how cruel do you think I am? Maybe I just thought you looked like you fell asleep two hours ago but no one told your body – and I wanted to do something nice for a friend.”

“Mm-hmm,” she mutters, unconvinced.

Tommy sighs over-dramatically. “Fine,” he admits, “there might be a little something I was hoping you’d do for me.”

She turns on her heel, heading back toward her patients. Tommy tags along beside her, “It’s not like it’s even a big favor – just a little something – no big deal – and actually, you’d be helping more than just me, really.”

“Out with it Merlyn, the more you talk the less likely I am to say yes,” she demands, side-eyeing him.

He rolls his eyes at her but then explains, “Well, as you may remember, exactly one year ago Saturday, Laurel made the worst mistake of her life and agreed to go out with me –”

“Yes,” she interrupts, “we’ve all questioned her judgment since.”

Tommy continues, ignoring her, “What you may not remember is that, before Laurel, I was not exactly a one-woman kind of man –”

“No,” she gasps, sarcastic disbelief making her eyes go wide.

“I know,” Tommy agrees, playing along, “sadly, it’s true, Felicity. But I’m a changed man now and I was thinking of doing something special for our anniversary.”

“Special like what?” she asks because she’s curious about how this is supposed to relate to some favor from her.

“Oh, you know,” Tommy waves nonchalantly, “take her up to the cabin for the weekend, champagne, hot tub, skiing, proposal –”

She blames her exhaustion for the few seconds it takes her to register the words coming out of Tommy’s mouth but when she finally gets it, her jaw drops and her eyes go wide for real.

“Are kidding me?” she asks, floored.

Tommy’s grin might actually split his face in two.

“Congratulations!” she practically throws herself onto Tommy’s chest, her coffee sloshing dangerously in its cup.

When she pulls away, they are both laughing and Tommy’s looking a little pink – which is adorable on him. “So,” he begins, sheepish, “the one flaw in my plan is that Laurel’s supposed to be on-call this weekend and I don’t really want to deal with bloodshed unless absolutely necessary.”

Felicity nods – of course this would be his favor. She thinks about how tired she is at the moment and for a brief, cruel second, she considers asking him to bribe someone else into taking Saturday’s nightshift, but the hopeful look on Tommy’s face is just too hard to resist.

“Not a problem,” she relents, hoping that her sigh doesn’t sound too put-upon, “I can cover for her.”

Tommy is practically giddy, “Thank you, Felicity. Thank you.”

“Uh-huh,” she smirks, “just know that you owe me more than just a cup of coffee for this one.”

He’s backtracking toward the nurses’ station, smiling at her the whole way, and somehow managing to avoid the dozen other people walking around hallway.

“You’re the best!” he calls, pointing at her.

“Yeah, yeah,” she replies, making a show of rolling her eyes. The smile on her face softens the effect of her sarcasm though and Tommy’s laughing as he rounds the corner away from her.

She’s happy for Tommy. He and Laurel are actually kind of perfect for each other, which, to be honest, was completely unexpected for most of the people who knew them. But they’ve got this nice balance going – his playfulness to her temperance – they just kind of work.

Would it be too much to ask for the same? With her luck, probably.

“Hey, Felicity,” Thea Queen – a leading contender for Tommy’s Best Nurse crown, despite her youth – is standing in a doorway, scanning a patient chart, when Felicity wanders up.

There’s a frown on the young woman’s face but the patient in this room isn’t Felicity’s so she has no idea what might be wrong, “What’s up?”

Thea hands her the chart, pointing out some familiar chicken scratch on the lower lines, “Dr. Palmer noted that Mr. Gordon was supposed to be receiving nitrates for his chest pain – and that’s fine – but when I took a blood sample, look at the levels. Doesn’t his red blood count seem low?”

Felicity glances at the levels on the chart. They're a hedge lower than she’d like to have seen.

“I’m just concerned about keeping up the regimen through the night,” Thea admits, looking unsure of herself. She shouldn’t; she’s got a good eye.

“The levels are low,” Felicity remarks, handing Thea the chart back, “he’s certainly right on the cusp. Dr. Palmer thought they were acceptable though – I say continue with the meds but keep a close eye on him. The last thing we need is for him have a stroke.”

Thea nods, “Thanks.”

Felicity waves her off, “No need. You caught it, not me. You’re right to trust your instincts.”

Thea tucks the chart back into a plastic holder on the door and Felicity thinks it might be to hide a little bit of proud embarrassment. When she turns back, the flush on her cheeks is nearly the same color as her scrubs.

“Any plans for the weekend?” Felicity asks Thea as they walk through the hallway together.

Thea shrugs, “Mom wants me and Ollie to go with her to Gotham for some medical conference or something but I don’t know if we’ll end up doing that. Ollie isn’t always on the best terms with her these days.”

Yes. Oliver Queen – Thea’s unfairly attractive older brother: stoic, humorless paramedic. The bane of Felicity’s existence. Apparently he was some sort of reformed playboy creep who shirked his mother’s dreams of becoming a doctor like his father and eventually – probably after having spent so much time in them personally – ended up in an ambulance. Felicity didn’t know how much of that was true, all she knew was that Oliver Queen was pretty much just an asshole.

The first time they’d met had been in the staff lounge while she’d been on one of her rare five minute breaks. She’d been perfectly content – coffee from Jitters, laptop charged up, final draft of an article she’d written for the Medical Journal, when – BAM! He’d walked right into her chair. Her latte had completely doused both her scrubs and the computer, which had then sizzled pathetically for a few minutes as all her hopes for publication sparked into non-existence.

He hadn’t even really apologized; certainly not with the gravity and devastation that the situation presented. No – he’d offered to buy her a new coffee. A coffee. Like that had been the biggest problem.

And now, to make matters worse, he’d been trying this overly nice, awkward thing around her. As if that will completely change her opinion of him. Does he think she’s an idiot?

So yeah, Oliver Queen – bona fide asshole in her book.

But she likes Thea so her comments have nothing to do with him, “You could always go.”

Thea makes a face, “Yeah, but they really aren’t as much fun without him. They’re all pretty much the same – you’ve been to one, you’ve been to a hundred.”

Thea’s mother, Moira Dearden Queen, was a bigwig in the medical industry: x-ray machines, robotic surgeons, MRIs, cancer research; if it was high-tech medical, it probably had the Queen Consolidated seal on it somewhere. Her late husband, Dr. Robert Queen, had been one of most sought-out cardiovascular surgeons in the country before his untimely death. In fact, it was his name above the door of the cardio wing in Starling General – a door she frequently passed through.

“Well,” Felicity smiles, “if you decide not to go, there’ll be a really awesome doctor on staff on Saturday night who could totally use someone around so she won’t kill herself from boredom.”

Thea laughs, “I’ll think about it.”

They pause at the ER intake desk where Cisco is directing traffic in his comic cartoon-print scrubs. Walter Steele might be the head of this hospital but Cisco is the one that makes it run. At the moment, he’s triaging some jackass with a dinner fork stuck in his thigh, fielding another impatient man’s questions about how long this is going to take, and handing out clipboards with intake forms on them for the newest patients.

“Evening ladies,” he says as he zooms past them.

Sadly, he’s not alone.

“Ollie,” Thea wraps her arms around her brother’s wide shoulders. Jeez – did the man have a single flaw? Physically speaking, of course; obviously his personality was lacking.

“Hey, Speedy,” he grins into her short hair.

Okay. So when he’s with his younger sister, he actually seems kind of tolerable; sweet, even – like he might have a heart that isn’t completely blackened by selfishness. He does all this annoying stuff for them too: bringing food during long shifts – usually for Thea but he’s quick to get enough for other interested parties; dropping off coffee orders from Jitters, which is everyone’s favorite place; he even gives Barry rides home when his deathtrap of a car dies, which is pretty regularly.

But other than that – complete jerk.

“Hey, Felicity,” he says when Thea pulls away from him. He has a really nice smile but Felicity doesn’t let it fluster her. She won’t be manipulated by his good looks.

She nods at him in a way she thinks conveys her indifference to him, “Oliver.”

Over his shoulder, his partner, John Diggle, looks up from the forms he’s filling out for the idiot with the fork in his leg. He smirks at the back of Oliver’s head – which Felicity doesn’t understand at all – and then turns a genuine smile toward her, “Felicity.”

“Hey, Dig.” She actually really likes Dig. He’s funny and charming and he always remembers that she’s allergic to peanuts so the Kung Pao chicken he and Oliver get her is nut-free; if she had an older brother she would want him to be just like Dig. As it is, Dig feels more like family than her own mother sometimes.

“Slow night?” Thea asks, eyeing the guy with the fork.

“Not bad,” Oliver answers with a shrug.

“There’s that press conference at City Hall tonight,” Dig adds, dropping the clipboard he’d been filling out onto Cisco’s desk, “plus the weather’s not great. Not too many people out getting hurt apparently.”

“Small miracles,” Felicity notes.

She shouldn’t have. She really shouldn’t have. She’s not really a superstitious person by nature – to be fair, she’s mostly still Jewish because her mother forces her to come home for Passover every year – but even she knows better: the minute you say something is the minute everything goes to shit.

An ambulance pulls up outside the automatic glass doors, sirens blaring and lights flashing. The rear doors fly open and the first person to hit the ground is Sara Lance, blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. Oliver and Dig hurry out to help as Sara pulls a stretcher from the truck.

Felicity can’t hear the exchange from inside but whatever Sara says sends both men hurrying back to their own ambulance, leaving the blonde medic to tend her patient.

There’s a man with her, dressed in SCPD blues, who looks like he’s gone into shock. His face is white as a sheet and he’s holding himself oddly still, just out of the way of the paramedics. When he follows the stretcher into the hospital, Felicity understands why.

There is blood streaked across his face and his hands are red with it.

The body on the stretcher is another man, older, eyes closed. His own blue uniform is soaking darker and darker by the minute despite Sara pressing a handful of gauze against a spot between his ribs.

“GSW to the chest,” Sara explains. There’s blood on her face too.

“Cisco get Caitlin scrubbed into Room 6,” Felicity shouts. Cisco is already on the phone.

“What happened?” Thea asks, voice frantic.

“Shooting at City Hall,” Sara says. They are running through the hospital corridors, staffers leaping aside to avoid being hit.

“Jesus,” Thea breathes. Felicity is too busy cataloguing injuries to let the news hit her. The blood hasn’t stopped oozing from the man’s chest and his breathing is getting shallower. The bullet could have punctured a lung.

They need to get him into surgery now.

Caitlin Snow is already waiting in OR 6 when they come hurtling out of the elevator, pink scrubs hidden beneath her blue surgical gown.

“What do we have?” she asks, gaze scanning the man as the surgical team takes control of the stretcher.

“GSW to the chest, possible internal bleeding and puncture to the right lung,” Felicity says.

“All right,” Caitlin responds. Felicity can tell she’s smiling even beneath her mask. She’s one of those people – like Felicity – who deal with stress through optimism. Nothing is unconquerable for Caitlin Snow, “We’ll take it from here.”

The doors to Room 6 close and Felicity turns to Sara, “How bad was it?”

Sara shakes her head, “At least fifty people wounded. Three dead on the scene, including the mayor. It’s not good.”

Felicity nods, taking it in, “We won’t keep you and Nyssa any longer then.”

Sara grimaces then runs toward the doorway for the stairs.

“Thea, go find that other guy. The partner, get him into a room and make sure he wasn’t hurt. It looks like shock but with all the panic he could be hit and not even feel it yet. Get him fluids and get him to lie down – drug him if you have to but get it done,” Felicity commands as she and Thea jog back downstairs to the ER intake.

Tommy and a few others have already gathered to deal with the incoming patients. Their faces are grim, panicked and exhausted. Most of these people are looking at their eighteenth hour on the clock.

“Let’s get this done people,” Tommy rouses as three ambulances come blazing to a stop in front of their doors.

 

&

 

“Here,” there is a coffee cup hanging in front of her face. At least, she thinks there is; it might actually be a hallucination though. Exhaustion can do strange things to the brain.

When she glances up, the cup isn’t simply floating in mid-air. She’s not sure which she would prefer – the hallucination theory or the reality of Oliver Queen holding out a cup of strong, glorious-smelling caffeinated beverage for her.

“Thanks,” she mumbles. Admittedly, it’s more because she’s tired than because it’s him – weirdly, he seems to understand that as he hands her the cup. It is exactly how she likes it, which is quite possibly the most fantastic thing in the entire world.

The staff lounge is quiet – most of the others doing rounds, a lucky few being replaced with fresh bodies and heading home – and she’s only taking a few minutes to catch her breath. Oliver drops into a chair, not close enough that he expects conversation but not so far that it would be awkward to talk to him if she wanted to.

She kind of does though – well, not to him, per say, but some noise would be nice. At first she’d been grateful for the silence of the lounge but it starting to feel oppressive. And he’s just sitting there, scratching at the Formica tabletop, his own to-go cup resting on his knee.

There’s a smudge of blood on the corner of his jaw.

“You okay?” she asks because he looks a bit like he’s gone off somewhere in his head. He’s a pretty quiet guy but with nights like tonight, well, people can find it hard to deal with everything.

He glances up at her. For a moment his expression is dark, harsh, but it softens quickly. He even gives her a gentle smile, “I’m fine. Thanks. You?”

Her. Well, she’s patched up about thirty mild injuries – some head trauma, broken bones, internal bleeding – and done two surgeries in the last eight hours. It’s nearing 3 am and she doesn’t actually remember the last time she slept. She’s fairly certain there is no actual blood in her body anymore, just caffeine, and she’s in the company of a man she finds confusing and infuriating –

“I’m okay,” she shrugs. He nods but she suspects that he might understand a bit more than just what she’s telling him. Whether he does or not, he doesn’t say anything more. She can’t tell if he’s leaving conversation to her for her benefit or his own but she’s grateful nonetheless.

They sit in silence for another moment and she’s considering whether she ought to ask him another question – not that she has any idea what to ask – when the lounge door opens and Tommy pokes his head in.

“They got one of them,” he says without preamble. “Apparently he got winged in the struggle and he’s demanding medical treatment. They’re bringing him in now.”

The man is wearing all black when the police walk him through the doors of the ER, cuffs keeping his hands secured tightly behind his back. He has a bruise forming around his eye and there’s blood trickling from his nose.

Felicity can’t help but wonder if those injuries are from his arrest or after it. She doesn’t feel as guilty as she should when she thinks about it. She follows behind the line of police who escort the prisoner toward one of the exam rooms, a clipboard already in hand.

“Got hit tryin’ to jump through a broken window,” Detective Lance mutters, coming to walk beside her. “Bastard shoots up a room full of people and he can’t stop complainin’ about unnecessary force when he takes a graze on the arm.”

The corner of her mouth pulls up a little, despite the situation. She’s always liked Lance.

“Well, we’ll patch him right up and then you can take him straight on to Iron Heights,” she assures.

They are just outside the exam room when shouting suddenly explodes in the hallway. Pushing and yelling seems to fill her whole field of vision. The young cop from before is pointing, lunging, trying to attack the man in handcuffs. Other officers are holding him back, pulling him away.

“You son of a bitch,” he’s cursing, reaching for the man who is cowering against the wall.

“Harper! Harper, goddamnit!” Lance grabs his arms, trying to drag the young officer away.

It takes three more cops, Oliver and Dig to break up the scuffle. Officer Harper is carted back to his own room, Thea following angrily.

“Mr. Colton,” Felicity begins, her voice bristling sharply. She stares at him coldly from behind her lenses, “Welcome to Starling General.”

“You’re the doc?” he asks and the implication behind the question makes her bristle. His leer doesn’t help. “I should get shot more often.”

Lance jerks on the man’s arm as he’s re-cuffing him to the bedrail, “Hey, keep your mouth shut, ya hear? Answer the questions and then shut up.”

Colton smirks but doesn’t make any more comments. He probably doesn’t fancy ending up with another broken bone tonight.

She and Tommy work quickly, checking his vitals, taking blood samples. Honestly, she can barely stomach being in the same room as him so the sooner she can get through this the better. He has internal injuries, bad enough that he requires at least observation overnight. The Police Commissioner doesn’t want anything to potentially fall in this guy’s favor during prosecution, including hospital neglect, so they are commanded to keep him.

Only three people are allowed anywhere near him – her, Tommy and Lance, who sits in the room, glaring at him and cracking his knuckles menacingly. Officer Harper apparently calmed down quite a bit after Thea gave him a dressing down but the patrolmen stationed outside Colton’s room are still to report if he comes by.

It’s all by the book, but Felicity still feels a horrible sliminess crawl up her skin when she thinks about treating the man who killed three people and wounded dozens of others. She took an oath to do no harm, to protect people – even the worst ones – but she can’t help how she feels while doing it.

“You look like you could use more coffee,” Oliver muses. He’s leaning an arm on the ER desk where she’s going through endless pages of intake forms, checking to make sure everything looks right. He’s smiling at her but it’s the same kind of sad, tired smile that everyone’s been wearing tonight.

“I was thinking a shower actually,” she replies. She doesn’t think a hundred showers would wash away the feeling of Colton aggressively checking out her butt while she’d leaned over the bedside monitor.

When she glances up at him, Oliver’s eyebrows are pretty high on his forehead, but she’s not entirely sure why he seems a little flustered. She’s certainly known to say inappropriate things – even to him – but she hadn’t been suggesting that he join her in the shower or anything. It was pure statement of fact.

Oliver seems to get over himself quickly, blinking a little rapidly as if to clear his head. He breathes a laugh to himself, grinning at the floor, and Felicity can’t help but wonder exactly what he’s thinking about. Not that it matters of course.

“Felicity,” he says, still smiling, “would you maybe –”

He’s cut off when a man – one who’d been brought in with the other City Hall victims – leaps onto a chair and fires two shots into the ceiling tiles. A dozen people drop to the floor, Oliver pushes Felicity down, crowding her against the desk, shielding her. The two officers who’d been guarding Colton’s doorway rush forward pulling weapons.

They don’t see the man with the bloody bandage around his hand pull out a gun until he shoots one officer in the knee. The man drops like a rock, collapsing into a heap on the linoleum floor, clutching his injured leg. The second officer, distracted, misses the third man behind him. The scuffle lasts a moment before the patrolman’s head is slammed against the corner of the wall.

There are people screaming, some managing to flee down the hallways. The first man takes pot shots at them, not bothering to care if he actually hits anyone or simply frightens them. Felicity huddles close to Oliver, both crouched low, her hands gripping the back of his shirt tightly.

“All right people,” the first man says. He’d come in complaining of head pain but that, it seems, had been a ruse to put him in the ER. He’s holding the pistol carefully, eyeing those remaining on the ground as he hops off the chair. “Here’s how this is going to work: no one is going to move a muscle. You do, you’ll end up like Officer Friendly over here.”

He nudges the patrolman bleeding on the floor, “We got doctors and nurses – hell –,” he points the gun at Oliver – Felicity tenses, “we even got a paramedic – so the sooner we get our guy and get out, the sooner you all can go back to saving lives.”

He’s the reason they have lives to save tonight, she thinks. But she doubts the gunman cares much. He’s moving toward the door to Colton’s room. It’s closed and Felicity suspects that Lance is waiting on the other side, gun drawn, calling for back-up.

“Knock, knock, Detective,” the gunman says. He’s flanked by the other two, both pointing weapons at the people crouching behind chairs and each other.

“Seems you got something of mine and I’m gonna need it back,” the gunman continues.

Whatever Lances shouts back through the door, it makes the gunman angry, “I got two guys out here with semi-automatics and room a full of people. You really want to test my patience? Give me Colton and nobody else has to get hurt.”

The patrolman on the floor makes a pitiful moan. Felicity’s gaze darts around the room. Cisco is shielding a few patients in the opposite corner, gathering them close behind him. Other people, patients and staff, are scattered around the room, frozen in fear. Tommy is huddled close to a few of the volunteer nurses – two of whom are barely eighteen – all looking frightened and pale. Tommy, however, is staring pointedly at Oliver, as if they are having a silent conversation. She remembers that they’re friends.

Oliver reaches out and his hand lands on her knee. She can feel his nervousness as his fingers spasm tightly against her scrubs. She swallows, trying to calm the panic she can feel threatening to drag her in.

She worries about the others: Dig and Thea, Sara and Nyssa, are they okay? Laurel had come in to help with the overflow of patients – where was she now? Felicity hopes they’re all somewhere safe, preferably out of the hospital.

“I’m going to give you until the count of ten, Detective,” the first gunman announces, “and then I’m going to start shooting people. One.”

Felicity’s grip on Oliver’s shirt tightens.

“Two.”

She tucks her face in between his shoulder blades, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Three.”

The patrolman moans again and Felicity can hear the faint cries of the other hostages. She presses closer to Oliver, if that’s possible, peeking over his shoulder. Tommy shakes his head quickly and she feels Oliver tense.

“Nine –,” the gunman takes a step back as Tommy rises to his feet. His face is strained but determined. Felicity’s breath catches in her chest.

“Stop,” Tommy demands. “You’re scaring everyone. You don’t have to shoot anyone. You’ve taken out the cops – everyone here is innocent.”

The gunman casually points his weapon at Tommy’s chest, “Well, well, Detective – looks like I have my first volunteer.”

The world seems to narrow to a single point, a single sound. The shot echoes – hollow – throughout the room. Tommy drops to the floor as people scatter. Someone is screaming. She realizes that it’s her. Not just her though, other people are shouting too. One of them might be Oliver. She runs toward Tommy and the gunmen are trying to get control of the situation again.

Suddenly the barrel of a gun is pointed directly over her collar bone. She takes half a step back into Oliver’s chest.

“Don’t move,” one of the gunmen growls, his gazing flicking between her and Oliver.

“You just shot my friend,” Felicity snaps, “I am going to help him.”

“I said don’t move,” the man repeats. He is one of the others, the one with the fake bandage on his hand.

“You’re just going to have to shoot me,” she replies, glaring at him. It’s a risk of course; these men had no qualms about shooting up a room of people at City Hall and his friend had just shot Tommy point blank in the chest but she doesn’t care. Tommy is bleeding out on the floor behind him and she is going to help him.

She’s not sure if it’s her determination, his surprise or perhaps some twisted morality that stays his hand but she and Oliver both push past him. There’s blood pooling across the linoleum – so much blood.

“Hold on Tommy,” Felicity begs. She listens for fluid in his lungs. All she hears is a wet gurgling. The knees of her scrubs are damp and red.

“Come on, man,” Oliver demands, lifting Tommy’s head, trying make breathing easier for him. Tommy’s face is pale and Felicity can see blood collecting at the corner of his mouth.

“Stay with us, Tommy,” she cries, pulling off her coat and pressing it against his wound. He needs surgery. “Tell me about this big proposal you’re supposed to be making.”

Tommy tries to say something but he can’t form the words. His eyes are drifting closed and there are tears blurring her vision. There’s too much blood on the floor around them.

“Open your eyes, Tommy,” Oliver’s voice is choked and when she looks at him, Felicity sees the tears on his cheeks. “Open your eyes.”

She hears more sirens but everything feels far away. Tommy’s chest has stopped rising. People are moving around them – cops are swarming through the glass doors and down the hallways. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knows that the three gunmen are being taken down by the waves of police. None of it registers though.

All she can see is Oliver.

 

&

 

“Hey,” she says it softly, fearful of startling him. He’s back in the staff lounge – alone, although Thea had sat with him for a while – his elbows on his knees, staring at the white and grey tiles on the floor.

He glances up at her but he looks nothing like the man she’s spent months disliking or even like the man who’d brought her coffee and sat with her earlier. He looks like a man who just watched his best friend die on the floor in front of him.

She wants to cry again.

“Are you all right?” he asks. He’s looking over her frantically, worried. There’s blood all over the front of her scrubs – she hasn’t gotten around to changing them yet – but she’s not hurt. He’s worrying over nothing.

“I’m fine, Oliver,” she replies, gently. “You…?” She trails off because it’s as silly a question as his. They aren’t fine – no matter how many times they say it. They haven’t been fine all night.

“He was going propose,” Oliver muses, sadly. “He dragged me along to buy the ring and everything.”

Felicity smiles faintly, nodding, “He asked me to cover Laurel’s shift for Saturday.”

“We shouldn’t tell her,” he decides. “She doesn’t need to know.”

Laurel’s up in one of the exam rooms, sedated. Her father and sister standing watch over her bedside. She’d nearly dislocated her shoulder trying to get to Tommy’s body after they’d let people back in.

“Yes she does,” Felicity says. She doesn’t want to argue with him and she knows that he’s saying things out of grief right now; she’s patient with him. “She should know how much he loved her.”

He nods like he understands her logic, “Later though.”

He needs to get out of here. He’s clearly in shock and being in the hospital isn’t going to help him. Neither is seeing her in clothes splattered with his friend’s blood.

“Come on,” she begins, holding out hand for him to take. He glances at it and then frowns up at her, “We’re getting out of here.”

She takes him back to her apartment, sits him on the couch and disappears into her bedroom for a change of clothes. Then she drags him into the bathroom and pulls off his pale blue button-down. He’s covered in blood too and his undershirt is soaked through. That comes off too.

She doesn’t let herself get self-conscious – stripping Oliver Queen out of his clothing – even if she does have a difficult time swallowing when she gets a good look at his chest. She finds him a new tee shirt – something Ray left behind when they broke up – and leaves him to manage that on his own.

When he wanders out of the bathroom a few minutes later she’s got Disney’s Robin Hood playing on the television – one of the few that doesn’t include someone dying – and a Chinese takeout menu in her lap.

He still seems a bit like a zombie but at least he’s no longer covered in gore.

“Hungry?” she asks as he lowers himself carefully onto the couch beside her.

He nods and scans the menu over her shoulder. She has Kung Pao chicken circled in pen from a previous night of takeout. He points at it, his eyebrows drawing down, “Why do you always get that?”

“Hmm?” she frowns at him. He hasn’t spoken in so long his first words catch her off guard.

“The Kung Pao chicken,” he clarifies. “It has peanuts in it – you’re allergic.”

She blinks, surprised that he knows this. Although, he’d been on enough Chinese food runs with Dig so she supposes it’s not completely shocking that he would have realized she never gets peanuts. Making the intuitive leap to allergy isn’t that difficult.

She shrugs, “I don’t know, just like it I guess.”

“Mm,” he hums, “I figured. I double check that they leave the peanuts off when I order it.”

“You?” her eyebrows arch on her forehead.

Oliver nods, “who’d you think brought you food all the time?”

“Dig,” she replies, matter-of-factly.

He shakes his head, “He stays in the bus – doesn’t like being in take-out places unless it’s Big Belly Burger, always says he won’t be able to eat the food if he sees what it looks like inside, too gross I guess.”

Everything she’d thought about Oliver is starting to feel muddled. It’s like the puzzle pieces of him – and him and her – are reordering themselves into a completely different picture. She doesn’t hate it; she kind of likes it. Maybe even a lot.

“Oliver,” she breathes. His blue eyes shift to hers. She remembers him protecting her in the ER; remembers him bringing her coffee after coffee – he’d probably told Tommy how she liked it; the late night sandwiches and ice cream, the Chinese food and Big Belly.

She’s pretty sure she’s been completely wrong about him.

It’s not a conscious decision that makes her lean forward between them and press her lips gently against his. She just does it. It’s chaste, barely brushing, more of a soft hello than anything particularly passionate. But her toes still curl at the feel of it regardless.

“What was that for?” he questions. She’s pleased to hear that his voice sounds a little unsteady too.

She smiles wider, “Because I wanted to – is that bad thing?” There is one fleeting moment where insecurity has her fearing she’s read him wrong.

“I’ve wanted to do that for months,” he says, “I wanted to do it the first day I met you.”

She laughs, remembering how angry she’d been that day. “I would have punched you if you tried.”

He chuckles. The sound makes everything around her feel lighter.

Like maybe it’s all going to be okay.

She twines her finger through Oliver’s, leaning into his side.

“So why is there a fox pretending to read the fortune of a lion on the TV?” he asks. She laughs out loud, tucking her feet underneath her, and proceeds to explain the finer points of the film to him.

When she wakes up a solid ten hours later, she’s wrapped up against Oliver’s chest and she just knows.

It’s definitely going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> In many ways, I was inspired by spiekiel's The 100 fic, 'electrocardiography.' It's a fantastic Bellarke story that you should really read if you ship the pairing. And if you don't but just like well-written fic, you should read it anyway. 
> 
> Thank you for reading this. I can never express how grateful I am that people take the time to read my work!


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